[...] I feel like you're patting me on the head when you say their "answers are always to some degree inaccurate."
Not at all - that statements reflects the objective truth of how I view the field of medicine.
I think that people expect too much, and therefore when they find some apparent discrepancy in what was once considered a medical "truth" need to come up with grand conspiracy theories to justify them.
Read Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes for a good story on how the actual science about cholesterol and heart disease was ignored, and a political agenda was put in as a substitute (boosted by George McGovern). He is a reputable science writer. [...]
You're making the point of my previous response to harley.
Gary Taubes is an excellent example of an individual who has a strong personal profit motive for sensationalizing a health story.
Also "reputable science writer" is not the same thing as "reputable scientist", and a book like he writes is not the same thing as good science.
I'm not saying there's no possible truth to what he writes, but I believe much of what he writes about is written with the motive of entertaining and engaging his audience as much as (or perhaps in excess of) informing them.
The primary sources are rarely as clear cut as authors like he represent, and the tactics used by these authors get in the way of an objective analysis of the sources.
Do I agree that past views on cholesterol and causes of heart disease were considerably different than today's body of knowledge suggests? Certainly. Do I agree that that implies some kind of grand conspiracy motivated by nefarious motives? Not so much. To me this is much more the normal evolution of scientific understanding.
Sure, there may be some political entities that gain in having one theory favored over another. But there are also many countering pressures (the self-promoters not being the least of them).
?
